Re:Uber: A Feisty Start-Up Is Met With Regulatory Snarl
by icebraining on Monday December 03, 2012 @05:02AM
(#4864724)
That's the rational argument, and yet, they clapped: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungergouging.h...
People prefer to have a shortage than feeling cheated.
Re:Uber: A Feisty Start-Up Is Met With Regulatory Snarl
by uvdiv on Monday December 03, 2012 @06:54AM
(#4864993)
Judging by your essay, they prefer feeling cheated to having a shortage -- it's other people's shortage they don't care much about. They buy the price-"gouged" products, then they support arresting the guy who sold them. They are free to go home empty-handed with their confused ethics intact.
This is a failure of political economics (not market failure). They didn't see the market choice. They thought the choice was political: don't buy, or get the police to make the guy lower his prices. They walk away with nothing.
Re:Uber: A Feisty Start-Up Is Met With Regulatory Snarl
by untog on Monday December 03, 2012 @09:26AM
(#4865460)
I don't think that anyone is disagreeing with what you're saying, but you can either go along with the (illogical) positions and choices people have, or try to challenge them. If you try to challenge them you run the risk of backlash.
That would do nothing about demand (spiked because of mass transit closures). Discouraging consumption with price increases is to customers' benefit: it keeps the service available. You have choice of not riding by taxi, or paying twice the price; with a shortage, you have no choice -- you're stuck. (Of course Uber's PR is about the supply side; the demand effect is way too non-PC).